Data Flow Analysis

Modeling workflows is always an errorprone task. Numerous business process requirements need to be integrated in the workflow model to enable a seamless integration into the existing Service environment. Beside existing WSDL based Web services the success of RESTful Web services added a new architectural concept to established Service oriented architectures. The orchestration of existing Web services to complex Workflows to achieve company goals is no more handled by WSDL Web services only. More and more Web services are exposed through RESTful interfaces providing access to shared resources. To ensure a consistent workflow design, data flow analysis of different Web service integrations is paramount.

Data Flow Analysis provides a conceptual framework to track data through the workflow models. In the next sections we introduce the Data Flow Analysis in different Service environments and how expressFlow handles these challenges.